1st 2025 174pp Hexen hardback in dustwrtapper. Purple Toile du Marais fine French cloth, design and titling foiled in gold. NEW.
 
Ltd. ed. 250 copies.
 
Aradia's Hidden Hand: The Untold Life of Roma Lister  uses never-before-analysed archival and epistolary materials to argue that Roma Lister, a hitherto unstudied British-Italian witch, folklorist and close friend of Charles Godfrey Leland, played a key role in the crafting of Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches — one of the most important texts in the modern revival of witchcraft. 

Although Lister has largely been forgotten, Manns unearths new information about her intimate connections to magical practitioners across Tuscany and the Roman countryside, as well as her secret activities as a medium during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Featuring a foreword by Maria J. P. Cuervo (Founder of Hellebore) Aradia’s Hidden Hand also includes an array of unpublished Italian legends and folk tales collected by Lister in addition to her essays on magic and religion. Overall, the book unpacks Lister’s Odyssean life and reveals her important role as one of the hidden women who helped pave the way for a new religion of witches.